Page 63: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (August 2012)

August 2012www.marinelink.com 63of producing standard rather than custom built vessels. This approach allowed Damen to have the more popu- lar ships ?in stock? able to be delivered in a matter of weeks rather than months or years. Today?s stock of ships in different locations, exceed 150 vessels. All a customer has to do is to specify the paint livery: in some cases the electrical/electronics/navigation pack- ages to be fitted and the ship is ready for delivery. Another and important benefit is that standardization of production means, greater efficiency and a lower man- ufacturing cost. No wonder this ?double win? of fast de- livery and competitive pricing meant rapidly increasing sales.The standardization concept also makes it easier for ships to be sold in ?kit form? whereby the steel is pre-cut to size for assembly (welding) locally in far off places. As required, a suitable workforce can be flown in to do the work, or more often, supervise and train a local workforce to build the ship themselves. On going train- ing to ensure a lasting business is provided on request. Where no shipyard exists, Damen will even help to create the shipyard first, then supervise building the ves- sels. In the 1990's ?The Enlarged Ship Concept?(ESC) was introduced in the patrol ship designs of the Stan Patrol 4207 and 4708 vessels. The ESC extends the length of the ship without changing the beam and importantly, not loading up the additional space with heavy objects so the displacement is not greatly increased. The length- ened hull offers more suitable positioning of vital areas such as the wheelhouse and crew accommodation areas. Increasing the length without changing the functionalitycreates more space enabling greater hydro- mechanical optimization of the hull design. A very sharp slender bow further reduces verti- cal accelerations with large waves. Early in the new millennium, complement- ing the ESC, the Sea Axe Bow Concept was developed offering superior motion behavior and unprecedented sea keeping attributes for certain applications. Damen was quick to in- corporate these benefits into new ship designs producing greatly improved bow performance with dramatic reduction in wave resistance and offering up to 20% reduction in fuel usage.The Sea Axe Bow is so called from the side view of the straight perpendicular bow where the keel line slopes down forward and the sheer line slopes up ? strongly re- sembling the blade of an axe. It was originally devel- oped by a team of Delft Technical University, Damen Shipyards, US Coast Guard, Royal Netherlands Navy and MARIN for patrol boats but is widely used for crew boats and fast supply vessels. Recently a 26m Fast Crew Supplier with catamaran hull has been successfully in-At press time Bayonne Dry Dock was finalizingrepair work on the USNS Watson (T-AKR 310), a Large, Medium- Speed RoRo Ship.MR#8 (58-65):MR Template 8/9/2012 10:41 AM Page 63